Hello all.
So around the time of the Indiegogo, or even possibly a couple days before, @Spriteclad took it upon himself to create a community IRC Channel #pixeltail with the goal of replacing the Skype Chat. This is where Samaritan was born.
Samaritan’s early goal was quite simple actually. All it was ever designed to do, was to generate a simple image. All this image was to be, was a simple show off of the current user count. This image to be exact.
http://gamechaser.net/pixeltail/toweruniteIRC.png
From there, Samaritan evolved into something I am quite proud of, and I consider it one of my first ever REAL programs that I have created. Not just a simple utility or tutorial, something of my own. Before I knew it, Samaritan was keeping tabs on the Indiegogo Earnings with a simple “!igg” command.
After that came detection of Pixeltail Developer’s Twitch Streams, which would notify the connected IRC users if any of the pixeltail developers were streaming, and provide a link to their channels. Then it was tackling the Trello, and providing updates to when the Trello Boards were updated. Towards the end, things like Google Search, YouTube Search, Weather and Dictionary were added.
I had been working on Samaritan since July, and have only recently ceased development of it. It was an amazing project to work on, and I am very proud of what it became. I learned quite a bit, not only in the sense of programming, but of specifically coding in Java. So here comes the big question.
Why release my source code?
Well…I don’t really know. After all the drama with #pixeltail turning into #TowerUnite, and the recent creation of the Tower Unite Discord area, I don’t really feel the IRC is all that needed anymore. For anyone reading this from the IRC Channel (@Drachen, @PoliteWhale, @SirParadox, @JamesDaGames, @OliPicard, @serjunpe, @meharryp, @Spriteclad and others), talking with you all has been an amazing experience, and that experience can continue on the Discord 
While I’m not 100% bailing on the IRC Channel, I’m comfortable saying that I believe the IRC is no longer really needed. Let me make myself clear, I’ll continue running Samaritan until #TowerUnite becomes UN-inhabited.
With the IRC Channel not being needed any more…neither would Samaritan. And, I am so proud of what I have created, I’ve decided to share it with everyone. Anyone who wants to learn, anyone who wants to go ahead and create their own version of Samaritan, anyone who wants to criticize my coding style, I welcome you all to it.
I had initial thoughts about not doing this. It’s that little feeling of, suddenly this things you’ve been so proud of, the moment you release it to the world…it’s almost no longer yours. I was initially scared of this, but I am now embracing it with open arms.
Shut up and give me the source code!
Alright. I’ll start by saying, while I am extremely proud of Samaritan, I will totally admit the current state of Samaritan is not…lets say…Professional. There will be bugs, there is UN-optimized code, there are unchecked exceptions. I am fully aware of this. I would not be surprised if the first time you manage to compile the Samaritan.jar, it doesn’t work.
That being said, everything you will see, is the same exact source code currently running Samaritan v.6.5.2 in the #TowerUnite channel right now.
I can’t really help you build this project into a .jar, but I have provided instructions on what you’d need to do to prepare for it, and I have also supplied all the dependencies that are required to be built into the Samaritan.jar. I’m afraid you are on your own for these steps.
Without futher ado, I, Caboose700, encourage anyone reading this post, to observe, modify, play with and learn from the Samaritan v.6.5.2 source code. I hope you have as much fun with it as I had building it.
Samaritan, a project spanning from July to September. I can’t count the number of time total spent building this, but it is a nice chapter in my life. Enjoy.
Bitbucket Repo: https://bitbucket.org/Caboose700/samaritan-public-repo
Trello: https://trello.com/b/xix2BF1i/samaritan
